"The great Sinologist Joseph Needham (1900–1995) is a legend for his Science and Civilisation in China, an encyclopedic account of China's achievements in science and technology.... Simon Winchester, author of The Professor and the Madman, builds on his success in writing about eccentric British intellectuals. Needham makes a great subject. A Cambridge University polymath who made his youthful mark as a biochemist, he was also a nudist, a performer of English folk dances involving ankle bells and sticks, an accordion player and an active Communist. His happy marriage to chemist Dorothy Needham survived his lifelong passion for his mistress, Lu Gwei-djen, the biochemist who taught him Chinese and collaborated with him on his master project."—Washington Post

"Needham (1900–95) was a Cambridge University don, left-wing enthusiast, and author of the multivolume, still-uncompleted Science and Civilisation in China.... Winchester's biography reveals a man of unquenchable energy and curiosity, which kept Needham's contemporaries constantly wondering what he would get up to next.... One day in 1937, he recorded the arrival at his office, and soon in his bed, of Lu Gwei-djen, a Chinese biochemist. From this romance (tolerated by Mrs. Needham) a monumental book was born, conceived in the course of fantastic adventures to collect Chinese texts that Needham undertook as a British diplomat in World War II China.... Reminiscent of Winchester's best-selling account of the OED (The Professor and the Madman, 1998), the capacious life of an academic comes alive in Winchester's skilled, insightful portrait."—Booklist